


sunlight on her face

by papersign



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty Spoilers (episode 36), Fluff, Gen, I just needed to get something out, Post-Amnesty, TAZ: Amnesty - Freeform, dani/aubrey is referenced, have this un-beta'd thing, y'all this finale hit hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 07:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20774870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersign/pseuds/papersign
Summary: After the events of episode 36, Aubrey takes a moment and reflects.





	sunlight on her face

The world is awash with light, and Aubrey revels in it.

They’ve been roaming around the newly-dubbed Chicane for a few weeks now, leaving life in their wake, coloring the world in fiery reds (her favorite) and cornflower blues (Dani’s favorite), in shades of green and brown and orange. The power that has been given to her from Sylvain thrums warm through her veins even as she sits in the dewy grass, watching the sun rise over the horizon.

It’s quiet.

Despite their weeks of travel, Aubrey knows they’ve got miles more to go before Sylvain is even a fraction of the way healed. Even with the party with which she travels, even with their energies combined, there is only so far her - Sylvain’s - magic can spread from her fingertips, from her feet. The planet is hardly repopulated with flora, and though they now know there is other life here then themselves (the mice-folk had stayed for a night, telling them about those who still lived on Sylvain’s surface and below), the fauna are a questionable number as it is.

Instead of being overwhelmed, Aubrey is invigorated by the challenge this poses. The possibilities for creation are endless - shown clearly through her pudding tree, standing somewhere in her metaphorical rear view mirror - but she isn’t willing to take full creative liberty with re-population. There is a responsibility that comes with being endowed by the powers of Sylvain and the fear of having those stripped from her before she’s ready hovers in the back of her mind. Beside that fear lays the fear of having these powers; it isn’t the power itself that frightens Aubrey, not anymore. What frightens her is the fact that she will be the one having to make big decisions - she has the burden of choice, and she knows that if she lingers too long on trying to figure out the right thing to do, the right thing that will please Dani, or Sylvain, or Janelle, or even Alexandra, she’ll be paralyzed by the momentous amount of choices she’s able to make.

So, she focuses on love.

Aubrey sits and watches the sun rise over their cobbled-together campsite and lets herself soak in the love that has been cultivated around her in the past days, weeks, months. Her gaze slips from the horizon to Dani’s slumbering form a few feet away, Dr. Harris Bonkers, Ph.D., curled beside her. Warmth fills her, a warmth stronger than that of the sun.

Her relationship with Dani continues to amaze her. Never has she felt so strongly, with such a depth of emotion, towards someone before. Every day with Dani is an adventure, and not simply because they’re going around Sylvain to repopulate it and she has a god inside of her. Adventure as this trek is, their adventures are much smaller, though powerful nonetheless. A new fact (Dani hates grapes, but will devour grape jelly, which Aubrey found out a few weeks ago), a new experience (Aubrey finding out she could, in fact, sprout trees and not just smaller flora, hours after making the move to Sylvain), a new memory (lying under the stars, fingers entangled, staring up at the same sky, the same moon, and feeling wholly moved, together) - all adventures, small things Aubrey wants to tuck into her pockets until they’re fit to burst.

She never wants to forget these small adventures.

She has them, too, with Janelle and Alexandra. Aubrey has grown remarkably fond of the girl, though they still bicker, though Alexandra’s thoughts still enter her head and get overwhelming. There is a subtle sort of grace to her, a strength to her curiosity, and Aubrey knows without question that if there ever came a time where they had to fight again, Alexandra wouldn’t hesitate to stand by her side. And despite the powers she has now, Aubrey still requests Janelle’s help in understanding what she has, what she can do, and, occasionally, she asks, in the quiet while the others nap or sunbathe, if she’ll still have powers when all this is over. Janelle will smile, in that kind way Aubrey’s grown to love, and shake her head. She doesn’t know any more than Aubrey does, and Aubrey has to content herself with that. Imagining her life without magic, after all that’s happened, is hard to even conceive.

So she doesn’t. Instead, Aubrey will lift her fingers, as she does now, and wiggle them, watching as flames flicker up, small and gently warming.

Aubrey smiles.

Her gaze returns to the horizon, where the sun has crept up steadily without her realizing, the sky a magnificent palette of pinks and oranges and blues, clouds dotting the painting overhead. Awe strikes Aubrey as it tends to do, now, and she leans back on her hands (flames extinguished, of course) to look up at the changing sky. A soft breath leaves her lips, eyes closing as a morning breeze sweeps over their campsite, rustling the grass around her.

In moments like these, she thinks not only of her traveling companions, but of those she left behind to go on this adventure. She thinks of Duck who is, undoubtedly, working tirelessly to plant saplings in the Amazon, his love of Minerva and of the trees that shelter them quiet but plain to see in the dirt that resides under his nails, on the palms that touch Minvera’s as they walk home. She thinks of Thacker, cataloging and creating records of the old and the new, training interns and using the things he’s gained from the Quell to work towards good.

Aubrey thinks of Ned.

Of Ned, who drove her crazy, who was off the walls and full of half-truths; of Ned, who saved their lives, who signed her letter with love, who was ready to sacrifice himself in order to rectify the wrongs his past was littered with; of Ned, who she misses all the time, her anger set aside, wrongs forgiven, to allow for grief, for grieving, for moments where she sits with Dani in the grass and allows herself to cry because of how squarely grief for those she’s lost hits her.

But now, as she opens her eyes again, staring at the cornflower blue of the sky, Aubrey doesn’t feel sadness as she sits in the grass of Chicane. She feels hope, she feels - she feels happy. Truly, deeply happy, filled with the warmth of the sun, the warmth of Sylvain thrumming in her veins, the warmth that comes from knowing she's doing something _good_.

Above all, though?

Aubrey feels love.

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all! first post on ao3 is taz amnesty since the finale killed me and I was itching to write like no other, but didn't want to hurt more than I already was. I wrote this in maybe an hour and a half lmao
> 
> thanks galore to the amazing brothers who produce these arcs.


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